Reading Assignment 2: “Cultural Globalization”——JIA MENGZHUO
1)SUMMER
The article discusses the multidimensional nature of cultural globalisation, noting that globalisation occurs not only in the economic and political spheres, but also in technology, environment and culture. Globalisation is described as a complex, accelerating and integrating process of global connectivity involving transnational flows of capital, goods, people, knowledge, information and ideas. The article highlights the significant impact of globalisation on everyday life, including the use of communication technologies, urban environments, lifestyles, entertainment and social anxiety. The article mentions the economic sphere as a dominant factor in globalisation, but warns against reducing it to a single cause and effect relationship. The author calls for an understanding of globalisation that avoids economic reductionism and emphasises the positive and transformative nature of the cultural sphere. The article points out that the impact of globalisation on culture cannot be seen simply as "cultural imperialism" or "Americanisation", but that culture should be understood as an intrinsic and influential component of globalisation. Culture is not a force, but a process of constructing meaning for social sharing. Culture creates meaning for life, and through shared stories and narratives we give purpose to existence.
Culture is the context of human behaviour, not only "the context in which [events] can be meaningfully interpreted", but also the original context in which human agency emerges. The connectivity brought about by globalisation is reflected in individual cultural choices and actions at the micro level, such as consumption decisions. However, globalisation has not led to a unified global culture and there is a tendency towards social, political and cultural fragmentation. While some predict that globalisation may lead to a monoculture, this assumption ignores the deeper impact of cultural practices and cultural products should not be confused with cultural practices. Globalisation involves contact between different cultures, but does not necessarily lead to global domination of Western culture.
Another way of approaching the issue of globalisation is to start from a longer historical context and look at how societies and cultures have imagined the world as a single place centred on their own culture. An early example is the thirteenth-century map of Europe, the Ebstorf Mappa Mundi, which shows the earth as round and is dominated by Christian theology. This early imagination expressed a "globalism" that highlighted the unity of Christianity in the world. However, this global imagination did not disappear with the complexity of cultural modernity, but rather retained at the heart of European Enlightenment rationality an imagination that projected "our world" onto "the world". This unjustified trend towards universalisation is not limited to religious worldviews, but can be seen as a central feature of European cultural modernity, reflected in the internationalisation of thinkers such as Kant.
Marx's description of a future communist society presents one of the most vivid global cultural imaginings of the nineteenth century. In The Communist Manifesto, he sketched a vision that eliminated national divisions and cultural attachments, envisioning a world with a universal language, a cosmopolitan literature, and shared cultural tastes. However, Marx's view of culture was still influenced by Eurocentrism and held a deep-seated prejudice against other cultures. Although he was a staunch internationalist, there was a tendency to turn a blind eye to cultural differences. He was optimistic about globalisation, but his Eurocentrism seems out of place today. This tendency to project global culture as universally ethnocentric contrasts with the rational vision of progressive humanism and challenges the reality of today's world that competes threateningly on a cultural model. The response to this challenge requires the promotion of a globalism that is not centred on a particular culture, leading to the construction of a more inclusive and rational globalised culture.
"De-territorialisation" marks a new direction in the globalisation of culture, highlighting the fact that culture is no longer confined to geographical locations. This concept turns traditional understandings of culture on their head, challenging the association of culture with the fixity of place. As global connections become embedded in everyday life, territorialisation weakens the role of local specificity in controlling culture. In everyday practice, the choice of global foods, transnational restaurants, international television, and telecommunication exemplify this "de-territorialisation". This phenomenon stems from economic, political and technological changes, in particular the reliance on electronic media and communication technologies. The "telemediation" of culture has become a key feature of life in the twenty-first century, presenting experience to humanity and marking a unique mode of de-territorialisation that redefines the baseline of the times. This transformation has far-reaching consequences in terms of our personal cultural world, our perception of the environment, our understanding and cultural identity at home and abroad.
2)Intersting aspect
3)Discussion
With the rise of telemediatisation, how will we redefine and experience cultural locality?
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